Windmills and Wooden Shoes

by Blair Jaekel

There can be only one reason for my clearing my conscience of Utrecht and ’S Hertogenbosch in one and the same chapter. This may or may not be apparent to him who has already toured Holland, for the two towns cannot be said to be on the same line of traffic; they are not even in the same province; neither are they alike in appearance. Utrecht, the capital of the province of that name, with its canals and old houses, its lime avenues and its shady parks, has more of the typical Dutch element in its make-up, and can be as easily reached, and as profitably, from either Rotterdam or Amsterdam.

’S Hertogenbosch, on the other hand, the frontier town of the southern provinces, lies along the route that leads into Germany, and its “windmills and wooden shoes” are conspicuous in their absence. It seems, out of respect for its geographical position, more of a Belgian city. Indeed, the Belgians, unable to conquer its Dutch nomenclature, long ago rechristened the place, and now it is as often spoken of by the more euphonious name of Bois le Duc—a merciful convenience for all of my personal purposes, because it is as difficult to write ’S Hertogenbosch as it is to pronounce it. Since to Bois le Duc it has been simplified, Bois le Duc it shall be henceforth called within these pages.

Now to divulge my secret for treating Utrecht and Bois le Duc in the same chapter: with their famous churches they are the most important ecclesiastical cities in Holland. Utrecht, in addition, is a university town, a cattle center, and one of the oldest places, as well as one of the largest, in the Netherlands. In Roman times it was known by the Latin translation of “The Ford of the Rhine”—Trajectum ad Rhenum. In the seventh century, under the Frisians, King Dagobert I founded here the first Frisian church. Subsequently the archbishops of Utrecht grew to be the most powerful of medieval prelates, and their see at an early date became renowned for the magnificence of its houses of worship. Utrecht was included in the French province of Lorraine, was later annexed to the German empire by force of circumstances, and enjoyed the distinction of being a favorite residence of the emperors. The union of the seven Dutch provinces was formed in Utrecht in 1579, under the sponsorship and direction of John of Nassau, brother of William, Prince of Orange, to establish the independence of the Netherlands. From that time on until 1593 the States-General assembled here; in that year the seat of the Dutch Government was transferred to The Hague. The most celebrated event in the old city’s history, however, took place on the 11th of April, 1713, when the peace was here concluded that terminated the Spanish wars of Succession.

That much for history.

Twentieth century Utrecht is different. Its old-time importance as one of the foremost commercial cities of the Middle Ages was owing to its enviable position on the Rhine where the river wrenches itself into two branches—the Old Rhine and the Vecht. The former percolates, according to the will and calculations of the Dutch engineers, into the North Sea at Katwyk, and the Vecht empties into the Zuyder Zee, near Muiden. The city’s commercial importance and activity have dwindled piteously into a weekly cattle market held in the Vreeburg, Utrecht’s great central square, occupying the site of a castle built in 1517 by Emperor Charles V.

Utrecht’s Cathedral, erected in the eleventh century upon the site of a church founded in 720

With the break of day on Saturday the farmers from the surrounding country, “klomped” in more varied styles of wooden shoes than you will find in any other single town in Holland, begin to arrive with their stock at the Vreeburg. In the night a conglomerate collection of little side-show tents and canvas-covered stalls for the sale of almost everything, has sprung up like a bed of mushrooms on the outskirts of the market place, so that the cattle dealer, after he has negotiated a substitution of stock for its equivalent in the coin of the realm, may want for neither amusement nor a convenient place to purchase the hundred and one articles that his better seven-eighths has cautioned him not to come home without.

Singularly enough, the same methods obtain in bargaining for cows in Utrecht that are prevalent while dickering for cheeses in Alkmaar. There is the same placid composure on the part of the seller, the same minute examination on the part of the buyer; there is the same Captain John Smith pose; there is the same whacking of hands; there is the same general exodus from the market place, after the ceremonies, to the more blithesome lunchrooms and halls of frivolity. I wish I might have followed up the case of a cattle dealer whom I saw in a certain café after the market, making a lunch of the uncertain mixture of a glass of beer and a dish of currants. The notation of the after effects of the combination might have been of value to materia medica.

Utrecht’s famous old churches have been pillaged and desecrated to a great extent by the elements and the changes wrought by time and tide. Once, long ago, when the followers of the various creeds were all at sixes and sevens, the Munsterkerk, the Pieterskerk, the Janskerk, and the cathedral itself, no doubt, with their cloistersful of clergy, were walled in and moated, and patronized as much as asylums of refuge as for worship. To-day they are simply tolerated. A coffeehouse does a land office business in the archbishop’s palace, and the tramcar company has tunneled through the vaulted archway of the great detached cathedral tower rather than go to the trouble of laying the tracks around it.